Victoria Sackville-West

Trio

So well she knew them both! yet as she cameInto the room, and heard their speechOf tragic meshes knotted with her name,And saw them, foes, but meeting each with eachCloser than friends, souls bared through enmity,Beneath their startled gaze she thought that sheBroke as the stranger on their conference,And stole abashed from thence.

Full Moon

She was wearing the coral taffeta trousersSomeone had brought her from Ispahan,And the little gold coat with pomegranate blossoms,And the coral-hafted feather fan;But she ran down a Kentish lane in the moonlight,And skipped in the pool of the moon as she ran.

She cared not a rap for all the big planets,For Betelgeuse or Aldebaran,And all the big planets cared nothing for her,That small impertinent charlatan;But she climbed on a Kentish stile in the moonlight,And laughed at the sky through the sticks of her fan.

Mariana In The North

All her youth is gone, her beautiful youth outworn,Daughter of tarn and tor, the moors that were once her homeNo longer know her step on the upland tracks forlornWhere she was wont to roam.

All her hounds are dead, her beautiful hounds are dead,That paced beside the hoofs of her high and nimble horse,Or streaked in lean pursuit of the tawny hare that fledOut of the yellow gorse.

All her lovers have passed, her beautiful lovers have passed,The young and eager men that fought for her arrogant hand,And the only voice which endures to mourn for her at the lastIs the voice of the lonely land.

Moonlight

What time the meanest brick and stoneTake on a beauty not their own,And past the flaw of builded woodShines the intention whole and good,And all the little homes of manRise to a dimmer, nobler span;When colour's absence gives escapeTo the deeper spirit of the shape,

-- Then earth's great architecture swellsAmong her mountains and her fellsUnder the moon to amplitudeMassive and primitive and rude:

-- Then do the clouds like silver flagsStream out above the tattered crags,And black and silver all the coastMarshalls its hunched and rocky host,And headlands striding sombrelyButtress the land against the sea,

Days I enjoy

Days I enjoy are days when nothing happens, When I have no engagements written on my block, When no one comes to disturb my inward peace, When no one comes to take me away from myself And turn me into a patchwork, a jig-saw puzzle, A broken mirror that once gave a whole reflection, Being so contrived that it takes too long a time To get myself back to myself when they have gone. The years are too strickly measured, and life too short For me to afford such bits of myself to my friends. And what have I to give my friends in the last resort? An awkwardness, a shyness, and a scrap, No thing that's truly me, a bootless waste, A waste of myself and them, for my life is mine And theirs presumably theirs, and cannot touch.